This post was written by Greg Capillo, a student at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky
On Friday April 2nd, the Benefits Committee at Western Kentucky University (WKU) called an emergency meeting and reversed 2 previous decisions; it extended benefits previously reserved for spouses to "other qualified dependents" including gay and lesbian couples. In the faculty email, the committee head mentioned "feedback" that the committee had heard regarding the decision.
That feedback was in actuality a movement 5 years in the making that united people from all levels of the university community; faculty, staff, and students stood together to strive for justice. On Friday, we achieved that.
When people first began petitioning for partner benefits at WKU, we knew we had a challenge. No president of a state university in Kentucky would want to stick their neck on the line and make an executive decision about this issue. After all, we live in a state that overwhelmingly voted to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Yet we also knew that we didn't have a progressive base on our Board of Regents that the more cosmopolitan universities like NKU, UK, and U of L, schools that already passed domestic partner benefits, might have. The issue was placed squarely in the lap of the benefits committee, and on two separate occasions, the benefits committee had voted to deny benefits. If this was going to happen, it was going to involve direct action from the bottom up of the university clamoring for change.
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